Posted on 10/31/2001 11:42:23 PM PST by Pericles
Bin Laden In Turkey Twice
ISTANBUL, Sept 21 (NTV-MSNBC) - Records show that Osama Bin Laden, the prime suspect in the terrorist attacks against the US last week, visited Turkey in 1996 and 1998. However, the curtain over who he has met with has yet to be lifted. The Saudi dissident bin Laden arrived in Turkey on 28 August 1996 in his private plane and stayed for 33 hours. bin Laden’s plane is reported to have landed at Adana’s Sakirpasa airport in the south of Turkey from the city of Jeddah in Saudi Arabia. The plane flew then to Istanbul and left Turkey the next day. During this trip to Turkey bin Laden was accompanied by one person apart from the crew.
bin Laden paid another visit to Turkey on 17 February 1998, just six months before bombing attacks on the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. This visit also had a stop over in Adana before flying to Istanbul. According to the records of Havas, which provided on the ground services to the plane, apart from bin Laden himself who was listed as “Muhammad Osama” there was one other passenger named El Sawaf.
Although bin Laden was on Interpol’s wanted list at the time of both his visits he has faced no difficulties while in Turkey.
Airways experts say that bin Laden could have flown from Jeddah to Istanbul without his plane having to refuel. One official from the State Airports Management said that it was noteworthy that in both cases bin Laden used the Adana airport and that this could have been a conscious choice.
Adana’s Sakirpasa airport is known for its poor record of security in recent years, with a number of hijackings taking place. The official stated that Adana could have been chosen to avoid passport controls.
Another interesting detail about the visits of bin Laden to Turkey is that the first visit was reported to the Ankara State Airport Management Directorate, as is compulsory for all private planes. The first visit has been recorded in Istanbul among in secret files. Another point was that the documentation for ground services given to the bin Laden plane were not put on computer and was filled by hand with the registration number left blank.
The American newspaper the Wall Street Journal in a news piece citing CIA sources, has claimed that bin Laden held talks with the Iraq intelligence service El Muhaberat.
NTV-MSNBC 9/21/01 8:13:29 AM
In a capacity not enjoyable to those laying siege to BosnasarayThis part I will agree with.
You don't say................
That would have required permission from others, and represents an option that would:
1. Unite the Christian Slavs in the Balkans if not everywhere else.
2. Ultimately paint Turkey and the mujihadeen with the same brush.
I remember the market attack. What makes you so sure that it was the Serbs who did it?Hmm. Some also say that WTC was self inflicted, or that the Russian apartment bombings were done by the Russian government.
SERBS 'NOT GUILTY' OF MASSACRE THE SUNDAY TIMES, 1 OCTOBER 1995, NO.8,927
by Hugh McManners, Defence Correspondent
British ammunition experts serving with the United Nations in Sarajevo have chalenged key "evidence" of the Serbian atrocity that triggered the devastating NATO bombing campaign which turned the tide of the Balkan war.
The experts, who examined the scene of the market massacre in Sarajevo in August, say they found no evidence that Bosnian Serbs had fired the lethal mortar round. They suspected the Bosnian government army might have been responsible.
They say French analysts who also examined the scene agreed with them. But they were overruled by the senior American officer, and the UN issued a statement saying it was beyond any doubt that the Bosnian Serbs were responsible for the blast, in which 37 people were killed and 90 wounded.
The carnage was used as a pretext for NATO's huge air campaign against the Bosnian Serbs, which was followed by extensive battlefield losses and forced the Serbs to the negotiating table.
The British experts were in a UN crater-analysis team that reached the Trznica (Markale) market in Sarajevo 40 minutes after the mortar attack on the morning of August 28. They began their inspection amid a bloody scene of smashed fruit stalls and screaming people.
Five mortars had been fired. The size of craters and metal splinters indicated that they were all of 120mm caliber, probably from towed mortars which are regularly fired into the city...
[...]
They suspected that the perpetrators might easily have been not the Bosnian Serbs but the Bosnian government army, which has been implicated in other incidents such as rocket attack on Sarajevo's television station on June 29, in which five people died and 30 others were injured.
The observations and findings were confirmed by the French, and they returned to base to make their report.
A senior American officer at the United Nations Protection Force (Unprofor) headquaters in Sarajevo dismissed their findings, however, citing a small groove known as a fuse furrow made in the ground by the bomb head.
...Neither British nor French analysis notice such a groove.
By nightfall, the UN announced that the Bosnian Serbs were to blame. Fewer than 48 hours later, the NATO air strikes and artillery campaign began... ...
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